Keywords: funeral poem, family history, Greek, Pietism, Rostock University, Schwaan
Based on biographical data in two funeral sermons printed in 1625 and 1627, the ­article introduces the family of the poet and future professor of Greek at the Gymnasium in Tallinn, Reiner Brockmann (1609–1647), and, more specifically, the social circle of his parents, notably his father, the Reverend Reiner Brockmann (1568–1626). It appears that those who expressed their condolences in the form of funeral poems in Latin dedicated to the deceased spose of Reverend Brockmann, Margareta Scheff­ter (1570–1625), were not only associated with the Faculty of Religion of ­Rostock University, but…

Keywords: working-class literature, literary history, working-class movement
The article is motivated by the marginal position of working-class literature in modern academic literary studies and the available theoretical views and definitions of working-class literature, which are largely obsolete or just superficial. The article highlights the problems associated with defining the concept of working-class literature, based on the relevant theories of well-recognised researchers such as John Lennon, Magnus Nilsson, Raoul Palmgren, Elsi Hyttinen and others. The focus is on the main definitions of working-class literature so far and their critique. The article seeks to provide answers to questions concerning the definition of working-class…

Keywords: pragmatism, semantic pragmatism, representationalism, Ene Mihkelson, scepticism, history
The article argues that the aesthetics of Ene Mihkelson’s prose invites the reader to give up the representationalist framework and instead adopt semantic pragmatism. Representationalism is a position in philosophy of language according to which sentences represent mind- and language-independent objective reality. Semantic pragmatism, however, does not consider sentences as representing reality, but rather takes the central aspect of a sentence’s meaning to be its role in a community’s language game.
The first part of the article explains how semantic pragmatism rejects representationalism, acknowledges the discursive-conceptual trap and thereby mitigates scepticism. According to…

Keywords: national identity, national narratives/myths, forest nation, Estonia
Contemporary Estonian identity includes a motif of Estonians as a nature-loving forest people. Although not original – its equivalents can be found across Europe – the motif describes Estonians as having a unique relationship with the local forest, reaching back to the ancient times. The article tracks down the formation of this motif and identifies the most important factors of intellectual and social history that have contributed to its development. An insight is given into the structure and subgenres of national narratives, how do they relate and support each other, and how they change.
As…

Keywords: cognitive linguistics, semantics, introspection, experimental methods, multidimensional scaling, facet theory
The aim of the article is to introduce a combination of research methods for studying polysemy. Ranking task is the central tool of this methodological combination, which enables creation of a semantic description that reflects how language users distinguish meanings of the studied word. For introducing the research process I used the Estonian adjective vana ‘old’ as an example. At the beginning of the study, I made the assumption that different senses of the adjective vana are related to different interpretations of time. Introspective analysis of the semantics of the adjective vana included four pairs of opposite…

Keywords: Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore, Jaan Jõgever, folklore, history of folklore studies
In Estonia, higher education in the vernacular became accessible in 1919. This was also the year when a folklore department was established at the University of Tartu, providing three-level education in folklore and enabling acquisition of both master’s and doctoral degrees. Previously (1803–1919) knowledge of Estonian culture had been transmitted to Tartu students by the lecturer of the Estonian Language. In 1909 Jaan Jõgever (1860–1924) was elected to the post. He did four lectures a week, one of which was dedicated to folklore, in particular to tale…

Keywords: place-lore, history of folklore studies, cultural identity, interdisciplinarity, ­Estonian Folklore Archives
The article discusses the necessity of place-based tradition as a multidisciplinary thematic area. A survey is given of the value of place-lore, including place legends, as a subject of research in Estonian folklore studies, beginning from the early days of folklore collection in the late 19th century until today. The concept of place-lore came to broaden the earlier genre- and text-based approach in the early 1990s, right after Estonia had regained its independence, when various paradigm shifts were due in science, as well as in society. This was also…

Keywords: reference, anaphora, demonstratives, personal pronouns, Estonian
This study focuses on reference in the Estonian language by taking an experimental approach to spatial and discourse reference. The aim is to reveal what is the inventory of referential devices in Estonian, and whether there are context-related factors that influence the choices made when referring. In particular, the data from two tasks are analysed. In the spatial setting, participants were asked to describe the surroundings by referring to large visible referents, i.e. houses. In the discourse setting, participants had to narrate a story based on a picture book by referring to animate and inanimate…